Today in Texas History - December 16
Today in Texas History - December 16
On this day in 1826, Benjamin Edwards and about thirty men rode into Nacogdoches and declared the Republic of Fredonia, thus instituting an attempted minor revolution known as the Fredonian Rebellion. Benjamin was the brother of Haden Edwards, who had received a grant near Nacogdoches and had settled some fifty families there. Fearing that the brothers were about to lose their land, Benjamin took the desperate step of declaring independence from Mexico. In spite of an attempt to get the Cherokees to help, the revolt was easily crushed by Mexican authorities, and Edwards was forced to flee across the Sabine. In 1837 he ran for governor of Mississippi, but died during the campaign.
Re: Today in Texas History - December 16
Houston Chronicle:
NACOGDOCHES - The oldest town in Texas has always been a culturally sophisticated place, as best I can tell, anyway.
The locals, after all, built a downtown opera house in 1889. Jere Jackson, a historian at Stephen F. Austin State University and the author of a fine book about early Nacogdoches, says that the two-story structure was built to induce theatrical companies to stop over between engagements in Shreveport and Houston. A ticket office and businesses occupied the ground floor; a wide staircase led to the theater on the second floor. On the front of the building was an open gallery over the sidewalk, where theatergoers would congregate during intermissions.
So, the year is 1907, and you're part of a full house gathered on a Saturday afternoon to hear a New York musical troupe called the Four Nightingales. Your little town by this time is on the southern vaudeville circuit, so you're accustomed to seeing plays, melodrama, magic shows and musical acts. Some folks you know - not you, of course - have even taken in the occasional burlesque show at the opera house.
On this particular afternoon, the curtain opens onto a cramped stage, and four young men wearing sailor suits, white straw hats, clip-on bow ties and paper lapel roses break into a popular song. Accompanying themselves on guitar, mandolin and violin, they offer up a few more numbers in four-part harmony, a dramatic reading or two and then - uh-oh, you find yourself stifling a yawn. The boys are fine. You've heard better, but in Nacogdoches you've heard worse, as well.
What you may not know as you listen is that three of the young men are brothers, and they're a long way from home. Sons of impoverished German Jewish immigrants in a family of five kids, they've grown up in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. Their mom, Minnie Marx, is their manager. Their names are Julius (soon to be known to the world as Groucho), Milton (Gummo) and Adolph (Harpo), along with their friend Lon Levy.
They're doing well on the circuit, much better than when young Julius had to drop out of school at 14 and find work to help support the large family. Still, Minnie is pinching pennies as they travel around the country. Here's how Groucho recalled her parsimony years later in a biography: "Because we were a kid act, we traveled at half-fare, despite the fact that we were all around 20. Minnie insisted we were 13. 'That kid of yours is in the dining car smoking a cigar,' the conductor told her. 'And another one is in the washroom shaving.' Minnie shook her head sadly. 'They grow so fast.'"
Upstaged by a mule
Whether Minnie was on hand in Nacogdoches that long-ago afternoon is lost to history, but her boys were hard at work making music when a man rushed up the stairs and burst through the theater doors. "MULE'S LOOSE!," he shouted, or words to that effect. Members of the audience leaped from their seats and hurried to the second-floor gallery, where they pushed and shoved and craned their necks to see what was causing the commotion on the street below. Others spilled down the staircase and out the front doors as if the building were on fire.
Maybe it was one mule that kicked a cart to pieces and was dragging it down the street or maybe it was a team of mules pulling a wagon - no one knows for sure - but there was mayhem on Main Street on a Saturday afternoon, and for the moment the matinee crowd found it more interesting than the musical offerings of the young Marx brothers. On the small stage, the befuddled boys saw their audience disappear in mid-tune. They had been upstaged by a raucous mule. Or mules.
Once the skittish animal regained his stolid mulish composure, audience members, no doubt still buzzing about the excitement, drifted back in and took their seats. The Marx brothers were miffed, particularly Julius. He began scurrying about the stage like a frenzied mule himself, pausing every few steps to pepper the audience with ad-hoc insults. "Nacogdoches is full of roaches!" he shouted. ("Roaches" was all he could think of that rhymed with Nacogdoches.) "The jackass is the finest flower of Tex-ass!"
Milton and Adolph, and presumably the non-Marx member of the group, got caught up in the frenzy of absurd insults and slapstick craziness that possessed young Julius. The jokes and Texas jibes kept coming.
A comedic hit
Groucho's son Arthur wrote decades later that the boys fully expected to be tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, but that's not what happened. The audience loved it, and at that moment - or so the story goes - the Marx brothers realized they were much better comedians than they were musicians. A star, indeed a comedic constellation, was born.
The brothers were still in Nacogdoches the next day, staying at the Rutland Hotel across the street from the opera house. Groucho was on the front porch with a group of guys playing a card game called euchre, when the local constabulary showed up and arrested them for playing cards on Sunday. Groucho didn't seem to mind. "The way I played it, they shouldn't have allowed it on Saturday either," he said years later.
Maybe, also, he'd already begun to realize that something big had happened the night before. In the next few days other Texas theater managers got word of the young upstarts, and when they moved on to Denison, they got a raise to $75 a week.
Stuck with him
The Nacogdoches Opera House, complete with historical marker, is still on the corner of East Main and Church Street, although the building is now an art gallery. The little Texas town that changed his life seemed to stick with Groucho too. Now and then on his quiz show, "You Bet Your Life," something would remind him of Nacogdoches - and roaches.
And then there's "Duck Soup," with Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly, leader of Freedonia ("Hail, hail Freedonia, land of the brave and free!"). Did Groucho know about the real Fredonia? In 1820, Texans in and around Nacogdoches rebelled against Mexico and for six weeks were citizens of their own free state. They called it the Republic of Fredonia.
I wouldn't bet my life that Groucho got the name from Nacogdoches, but it's a fact that Fredonia Street intersects Main Street. It's just a few blocks from the opera house where he and his brothers found their real show-business calling.
NACOGDOCHES - The oldest town in Texas has always been a culturally sophisticated place, as best I can tell, anyway.
The locals, after all, built a downtown opera house in 1889. Jere Jackson, a historian at Stephen F. Austin State University and the author of a fine book about early Nacogdoches, says that the two-story structure was built to induce theatrical companies to stop over between engagements in Shreveport and Houston. A ticket office and businesses occupied the ground floor; a wide staircase led to the theater on the second floor. On the front of the building was an open gallery over the sidewalk, where theatergoers would congregate during intermissions.
So, the year is 1907, and you're part of a full house gathered on a Saturday afternoon to hear a New York musical troupe called the Four Nightingales. Your little town by this time is on the southern vaudeville circuit, so you're accustomed to seeing plays, melodrama, magic shows and musical acts. Some folks you know - not you, of course - have even taken in the occasional burlesque show at the opera house.
On this particular afternoon, the curtain opens onto a cramped stage, and four young men wearing sailor suits, white straw hats, clip-on bow ties and paper lapel roses break into a popular song. Accompanying themselves on guitar, mandolin and violin, they offer up a few more numbers in four-part harmony, a dramatic reading or two and then - uh-oh, you find yourself stifling a yawn. The boys are fine. You've heard better, but in Nacogdoches you've heard worse, as well.
What you may not know as you listen is that three of the young men are brothers, and they're a long way from home. Sons of impoverished German Jewish immigrants in a family of five kids, they've grown up in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. Their mom, Minnie Marx, is their manager. Their names are Julius (soon to be known to the world as Groucho), Milton (Gummo) and Adolph (Harpo), along with their friend Lon Levy.
They're doing well on the circuit, much better than when young Julius had to drop out of school at 14 and find work to help support the large family. Still, Minnie is pinching pennies as they travel around the country. Here's how Groucho recalled her parsimony years later in a biography: "Because we were a kid act, we traveled at half-fare, despite the fact that we were all around 20. Minnie insisted we were 13. 'That kid of yours is in the dining car smoking a cigar,' the conductor told her. 'And another one is in the washroom shaving.' Minnie shook her head sadly. 'They grow so fast.'"
Upstaged by a mule
Whether Minnie was on hand in Nacogdoches that long-ago afternoon is lost to history, but her boys were hard at work making music when a man rushed up the stairs and burst through the theater doors. "MULE'S LOOSE!," he shouted, or words to that effect. Members of the audience leaped from their seats and hurried to the second-floor gallery, where they pushed and shoved and craned their necks to see what was causing the commotion on the street below. Others spilled down the staircase and out the front doors as if the building were on fire.
Maybe it was one mule that kicked a cart to pieces and was dragging it down the street or maybe it was a team of mules pulling a wagon - no one knows for sure - but there was mayhem on Main Street on a Saturday afternoon, and for the moment the matinee crowd found it more interesting than the musical offerings of the young Marx brothers. On the small stage, the befuddled boys saw their audience disappear in mid-tune. They had been upstaged by a raucous mule. Or mules.
Once the skittish animal regained his stolid mulish composure, audience members, no doubt still buzzing about the excitement, drifted back in and took their seats. The Marx brothers were miffed, particularly Julius. He began scurrying about the stage like a frenzied mule himself, pausing every few steps to pepper the audience with ad-hoc insults. "Nacogdoches is full of roaches!" he shouted. ("Roaches" was all he could think of that rhymed with Nacogdoches.) "The jackass is the finest flower of Tex-ass!"
Milton and Adolph, and presumably the non-Marx member of the group, got caught up in the frenzy of absurd insults and slapstick craziness that possessed young Julius. The jokes and Texas jibes kept coming.
A comedic hit
Groucho's son Arthur wrote decades later that the boys fully expected to be tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, but that's not what happened. The audience loved it, and at that moment - or so the story goes - the Marx brothers realized they were much better comedians than they were musicians. A star, indeed a comedic constellation, was born.
The brothers were still in Nacogdoches the next day, staying at the Rutland Hotel across the street from the opera house. Groucho was on the front porch with a group of guys playing a card game called euchre, when the local constabulary showed up and arrested them for playing cards on Sunday. Groucho didn't seem to mind. "The way I played it, they shouldn't have allowed it on Saturday either," he said years later.
Maybe, also, he'd already begun to realize that something big had happened the night before. In the next few days other Texas theater managers got word of the young upstarts, and when they moved on to Denison, they got a raise to $75 a week.
Stuck with him
The Nacogdoches Opera House, complete with historical marker, is still on the corner of East Main and Church Street, although the building is now an art gallery. The little Texas town that changed his life seemed to stick with Groucho too. Now and then on his quiz show, "You Bet Your Life," something would remind him of Nacogdoches - and roaches.
And then there's "Duck Soup," with Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly, leader of Freedonia ("Hail, hail Freedonia, land of the brave and free!"). Did Groucho know about the real Fredonia? In 1820, Texans in and around Nacogdoches rebelled against Mexico and for six weeks were citizens of their own free state. They called it the Republic of Fredonia.
I wouldn't bet my life that Groucho got the name from Nacogdoches, but it's a fact that Fredonia Street intersects Main Street. It's just a few blocks from the opera house where he and his brothers found their real show-business calling.
Re: Today in Texas History - December 16
I love this story, Big Tex!
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: planosteve and 221 guests